


Underneath the Mistletoe

by ffantastic



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Canon Universe, Christmas, Coming Out, Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff and Angst, Gay Keith (Voltron), Hair Braiding, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Minor Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Mistletoe, Oblivious Lance (Voltron), POV Keith (Voltron), POV Lance (Voltron), Pining Keith (Voltron), Sharing a Bed, Snowball Fight, a little angst at least, an alien twist on these concepts, ok i lied it's mostly fluff, stuck together, tags apply to the whole fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:42:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22031989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ffantastic/pseuds/ffantastic
Summary: The paladins encounter a planet stuck in eternal Christmas time, and even if some traditions are twisted there, they are determined to celebrate the first Christmas they've had in years. But not every twisted Christmas tradition is funny - and Lance and Keith end up stuck together under a mistletoe that isn't like the ones on Earth at all.
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron)
Comments: 31
Kudos: 178





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea approximately a year ago, so it's a little sad that I'm late for posting it for this Christmas, too, and it's not even the whole of it... I hope y'all enjoy reading Christmas fics in, like, April, because that's probably when I'll have time to finish this in its entirety
> 
> Enjoy! And merry Christmas :)

Christmas was Lance’s favorite holiday.

Since he had been a little child, the anticipation had never let him sleep through the whole night for most of December. The house was already loud and full year-round, but when Christmas drew nearer, there were even more people, louder voices, more laughter and singing. More hugs and kisses and smiles, family coming to visit that was usually far away, and delicious smells wafting through the house every day, though the best of the food was reserved for Christmas Eve. 

And even as a little boy with no knowledge of English, Lance had turned on every cheesy Hollywood Christmas movie he could find. He liked the cheesiest ones best. They were about a different version of Christmas – different food, different music or maybe no music at all, the families so small and sometimes so cold to each other, and snow, always snow everywhere - but he loved them all the same, for the warm squirmy feeling they gave him. 

Lance still loved Christmas as he got older, but he was aware of the not-so-great sides. Sure, his family was huge and close-knit, and the majority of them he saw multiple times per year, not only on Christmas, but it was different when they all had to meet under one roof, eat the same food, share the same space. With so many people, there had to be some who disliked each other, the kind of tension a four-year-old wouldn't pick up on, but an eight or nine-year-old could. Lance’s mother took the brunt of it.

The first time he saw her cry was on December 23rd when he was twelve. It was in the kitchen, and while Lance had been asleep for a few hours, tossing and turning and plagued by weird dreams, and finally woke and forced himself to fetch a glass of water, his mother had kept working on their Christmas Eve dinner. When Lance turned on the light, her figure on the bar stool in front of the counter with the batch of cooling sugar cookies didn't move, but he took a hasty step backwards. 

He had stuttered something, and she had looked up, a smile on her lips but tears still soundlessly streaming down her face. He had gone to hug her, distraught, questioning if maybe he was still asleep and this was a nightmare, and she had shooed him off back to bed with an excuse. Lance couldn't find sleep again that night, the smell of the cookies and his mother's shampoo still so permeating. It took years for him to wonder if maybe she hadn't been crying because the cookies hadn't turned out great. 

The year after that, Lance helped with the baking, and he didn’t see his mom cry again, but he knew it only meant he hadn’t caught her. 

At fourteen, he spent Christmas at the Garrison, because the flight back home was too expensive, and he was the one hiding so no one would see him cry. The thin blanket drawn over his head, salty tears drying on his face, he thought of his mother, and how sometimes Christmas meant sacrifice and tears as much as it meant joy and celebration. 

Now, in space, there was little time to think about Christmas, little time to cry. He did sometimes, in the beginning. But soon routine set in, some kind of pride in what he was doing, what they were doing. Lance lost track of the days. Time was passing, birthdays were passing, his teammates’ and his family’s and his own. Holidays were passing by, and they didn’t celebrate. Sometimes there was a cake, and they pretended it was someone’s birthday, but it was more to keep the morale than because they ever knew what date it was on Earth. Time was weird in space, and even Alteans didn’t have technology to convert space time into Earth time, a planet they had never been to. 

So, by the time they arrived on Naskö, Lance had almost forgotten Christmas had ever been a thing. Almost. It wasn’t buried deeply enough that the sight of a small town covered in snow, with windows lit up yellow and pine twigs above entrance doors didn’t stir the memory. This town, small and yet the capital of a possible ally, looked like a stereotypical Christmas town from one of the movies he’d loved so much as a child: quaint and snowy and magical, in a quiet, everyday kind of way. Lance had to squint to even notice they were on an alien planet. 

The paladins hadn’t known a lot about Naskö before they embarked on their mission: It was a small planet with a small capital, known for tourism and for how peaceful it was. Not for anything involving the war. The mission was a diplomatic endeavor but also a short holiday, and Coran and Allura had stayed behind, letting the paladins handle it on their own. And if the Alteans trusted them on their own without any extensive mission briefing, it couldn't be a difficult or dangerous mission. 

The planet truly didn’t seem dangerous so far. But, as they approached the town on foot in their paladin suits, and Lance couldn’t close his mouth and was gaping at every picturesque, glowing, snow-covered house they passed, he thought a warning might have been nice. He had been catapulted into a childhood dream, and something of the Christmas joy he had missed for so long trickled back into him. It was difficult to keep his smile under control. 

Hunk was, much like Lance, looking around with his mouth ajar as they passed the barrier into the town and crossed paths with the first Naskö-ian, a small but humanoid figure dressed in shades of red and green, smiling and waving at them. 

“What’s going on? Is this normal for this planet?” Lance asked in a hushed voice. 

Hunk turned his eyes to Lance and snapped his jaw shut. 

“I think so. Otherwise Coran would have warned us, right?” 

Pidge, who was walking two steps in front of them, snorted. 

“Only if he thought this _wasn’t_ normal.” 

“Maybe there’s something in the files. There must be files about Naskö.” 

Pidge agreed with a nod, but she was already scrolling through something in her visor, her posture was stiff, not as if there was anything worthwhile. Lance was about to reassure her – nothing less threatening than a Christmas town - when Shiro turned around. 

“Keep moving, guys, you know we’re supposed to meet the government officials in the town center.” 

Keith threw a look over his shoulder from where he was walking close behind Shiro. At least _he_ didn’t stand out too much, his armor had the right colors for this planet. If Lance had known they were going to go to a Christmas planet, he would have insisted on matching outfits for everyone, even Keith, who didn’t seem like someone who would get into the holiday spirit. But that would have been the fun part of it, Keith’s grumpy face in an ugly sweater and a bobble hat. It was almost adorable. Lance’s lips twitched into a smile - maybe they would be lucky enough to get to dress in the traditional garb of a Christmas elf. 

“What’re you smiling about?” 

Hunk leaned closer to him. 

“Oh, nothing. Just happy we’ll get to celebrate Christmas again.” 

He met Hunk’s gaze, and his heart swelled at his best friend’s warm smile. Maybe this was all he needed to make wonderful Christmas memories again. 

Even if there was little other information about the planet available, the paladins had a map of this small town, leading them to the center through cramped, narrow streets. Everyone they met was dressed in red and green, sometimes with a pointy hat, and carrying something – a pine tree too large for the small Naskö-ians, a basket of baked goods, a trove of books or clothes, and other, more obscure things Lance couldn’t identify in walking by. It was a town of Christmas elves. When he looked up, still all the roofs were dusted in snow, and chatter, singing in the distance and a faint tinkling of bells colored the air. It was like a December dream come true, and the dopey smile wouldn’t leave Lance’s face, even if Pidge’s frown deepened as she went further into the data and still couldn’t find anything weird about the planet. 

“There has to be an explanation. It would be too much of a coincidence -”

But Lance didn’t care. He was just happy to have his Christmas and if they spent long enough here, even Pidge, even Keith, would be lulled in by the Christmas spirit. His ultimate goal: Spend a nice, stereotypical holiday with his team on this nice, weird stereotypical planet, with everyone in the holiday spirit. 

It had been dusk when they had arrived, and now it was getting dark. Maybe it was always winter on this planet - the days always short, the snow always falling. The way so many humans imagined their perfect Christmas. It was a little weird to find a place so perfectly adherent to the idea of a holiday a majority of the people on Earth celebrated so far away from anything to do with Earth. But it was going to be fun. It was going to bring them closer together. 

The town center was to the town what a clearing was to a forest. They broke free of the narrow streets into a little round place, where the waning sunlight illuminated the cobblestone pavement. In the middle, a group of five Naskö-ians waited, distinguishable from the other inhabitants by their longer and more colorfully decorated hats. Their hands were folded, and they all smiled warmly. The one in the middle stepped forward as the paladins approached. 

“Welcome, paladins!” 

They exchanged greetings. Lance shook all of their hands and grinned at them: They might have been small and frail, but their handshakes were firm. The officials and the paladins fell into step next to each other on the way to the place they would be staying at. Shiro, one step ahead of Lance, was mumbling something. One of the officials, almost half his height, stepped closer to him as they walked slowly. 

“I have to ask,” Shiro started, a bit hesitant, as if he was embarrassed, “but are you… celebrating Christmas right now? Or is your planet always like this?” 

The official blinked, as if he hadn’t understood the question. 

“Always like what?” 

“Always decorated like that,” Keith chimed in from behind, waving his hand around awkwardly, “with the lights and the trees and the… stuff.” 

The official looked between Shiro and Keith as if he was contemplating whether an alliance with Voltron was worth it to have to deal with these weirdos. Lance cleared his throat and took a large step, so he was next to Keith. The official slid his eyes to Lance, more bewildered now. Lance just smiled. 

“On our home planet we have a holiday to… to celebrate the midwinter and the birth of an, um, important historical figure, and the traditions look a lot like your customs and your planet in general. So, that is what we were all wondering. Have you heard of Christmas?” 

The official was contemplating Lance now, face more neutral than before, looking up at him with warm, dark eyes, and feathery white eyebrows drawn into his face. 

“No, we have never heard of 'Christmas'. Nor have we ever made contact with your home planet. It is very interesting that you have a holiday so closely related to Räk.” 

His face lightened as they turned a corner. 

“This will be an interesting topic to discuss later.” 

Pidge was frowning, and now Hunk was leaning over to look at the archives she had stopped scrolling through, but he was more curious than distraught. Shiro looked a little puzzled, and Keith returned Lance's glance with a tilt to his eyebrows that meant he felt the same way about this as Lance did: The universe was vast and weird, and something strange like this was bound to happen to them sooner or later. 

The corner led them out of the main town, and onto a road leading to a mansion, set on a small hill. Lance’s jaw fell again. It wasn't a huge mansion, just large enough to be more than a house, but it had a silent sort of grandeur, large gleaming windows and gold and green decorations blinking from corners. Against the dark blue sky, sitting on a snowy hill, it was a picture for a postcard or an animated winter movie. It was straight up a Christmas mansion, the place where children came when they dreamed. 

“Are - are we going to be sleeping in there?” 

Lance’s voice cracked at the question, but he couldn’t help it. His finger was shaking as he raised his hand and pointed at the mansion. 

“Of course,” the official answered, swiveling back on Lance with a concerned frown. 

However strange the Naskö-ian found the question, the other paladins agreed with Lance. Hunk was aw-ing quietly next to him, Pidge's eyes had gone huge and round, Shiro’s smile stretched all the way to his ears, and Keith was also staring up, as if he couldn’t believe it. 

Inside, the mansion was like an old hotel, on the edge between fancy and run-down. Memories were woven into the tapestries and dropped between the fibers of the carpets. And everything was Christmas-themed, a little more alien than a hotel on Earth would have been: The stairs bent under their feet and some of the doors were too narrow and too low to fit through, sometimes through a dark passage there was a shadow in a color that shouldn't have existed, glittering and weaving itself. 

The paladins were shown their separate rooms. None of them were too large, all of them with an attached bathroom and a color scheme: different, but all of them Christmas colors. Lance’s room was baby blue and white, some silver mixed in, stylized snowflakes scattered on the walls, the furniture painted white and the bedspread like a snowy landscape. It felt a little cold, but beautiful, and Lance loved the room instantly. The bed was not too large, but not as small as his bunk on the castleship, and it had a canopy. In the closet he found stacks of Christmas-appropriate clothing. As he took a sweater and scrutinized the pattern, he grinned at what the others would find in their closets. Especially Keith. He wished there was a collection of bizarre sweaters in Keith’s closet, and he would come to dinner wearing a red-nosed reindeer on the chest. 

Lance’s smile was permanent now, and even in his cold room he was warm. This was already the best, easiest mission they’d ever been on. He picked out the darkest sweater, with a single glittery snowflake embroidered on the front and the lightest pair of pants and headed out. 

In Christmas mansion, corridors led to where you needed them to go. Lance followed his nose and the rich, tangy smell of a savory winter meal. Lance’s smile grew into a grin. It smelled like a feast, like all his favorite dishes and every dish he'd ever wanted to try. He found the room the others were waiting in with the door wide open, and stepped through, eyes set on the dining table. He didn't see the Naskö-ian on their way out of the door. Lance froze as they jumped back and steadied themselves with a hand over their chest. Lance stared at them. Their wide eyes were almost fearful. 

“What?” he asked. 

They pointed up with a shaking hand. 

“There’s a Müske in this doorway.” 

In the doorway, above Lance's head, was a mistletoe, no different than mistletoes on Earth. Lance smiled at the poor person he’d almost had to kiss. 

“Would it have been so bad to have to kiss me?” 

It had been supposed to be a joke, and nothing in his friendly, humorous tone suggested otherwise, but the Naskö-ian shrank back as if he had offended them terribly. 

“P-please,” they stuttered, and made a motion to shoo Lance into the room. 

He obeyed, still confused. As soon as he was out of the doorway, the Naskö-ian hastened away, and he was left staring at the mistletoe. Maybe the Naskö-ians were a little shyer about kissing than humans were. Their reaction still didn’t sit right with him, and he vowed to apologize should he ever see them again. 

The dining room was small and cozy, with a large round table and enough chairs to house the paladins and a few officials. Through an open door in the back, the delicious smell wafted into the room, and someone was making racket with an assortment of kitchen utensils. To the right, a large window looked out over the hill toward the small town at its bottom, now a speck of warm glittering lights in the mass of dark snow. And in the corner of the room, a large pine tree towered over everything. It touched the high ceiling effortlessly, and was of a shimmering, luscious green, with red and gold baubles geometrically distributed across its branches. Lance took a step closer involuntarily. It was too enormous to hug, but he felt the need to reach out and touch one of the branches. 

Keith got there before he did. He stepped out of the peripheral of Lance's vision, arm outstretched, fingertip almost brushing one of the golden baubles. To Lance's dismay, Keith wasn't dressed in a gaudy sweater, but a sensible one striped in red and gold and dark pants. The light from the electric candles reflected in his hair and his eyes and he was so transfixed, as if something would happen once his finger made contact, that Lance settled back to watch. 

Keith's finger touched the bauble. His awed expression changed to horror and he shied back, just as the tree did the same. Lance was frozen in his spot, eyes wide, as the Christmas tree shook its branches and lifted them, spun around its axis and shivered back into stasis, like a scared animal. Shiro hastened over from the kitchen, one of the officials hot on his heels. 

“Keith, no!” 

“I didn’t do anything!” 

“You probably touched a bauble, right? It sensed that you keep breaking them.” 

Keith glared at Shiro but didn’t respond. The official fixed them with a serious stare. 

“Did one of you disturb the Räkte?” 

Shiro pointed to Keith, who frowned, but didn’t deny it. The official turned to him. 

“The Räkte are very delicate creatures. Do not disturb them!” 

Keith's mouth dropped open, but he didn't have anything to say, and neither did Shiro or Lance, or Pidge who had just slunk into the room. Lance blinked and glanced at the tree again. It was still, like any tree on Earth would have been, but there were no wires to the electric candles, and no string for the baubles. The Christmas trees were alive here. It was weird, but, Lance decided as he sat at the table, the good kind of weird. The kind of weird that made him grin, made him excited to find out more about what else might be different, too. 

After dinner, a delicious affair, where seemingly familiar dishes turned out completely different, and alien delicacies tasted like his favorite Earth food, Lance was full, but not tired enough to go to sleep yet. It had been an early dinner, fitting with the early nightfall on Naskö, so there was still plenty of time to do something with the night. Hunk and Pidge came back to his room, and together, they looked through the shelves in Lance’s room. They chose a few alien board games, set them out on Lance’s bed, and Lance was all content with the way it was going. Game night. Perfect Christmas tradition. 

“Do you think we should invite Keith, too? Shiro?” Hunk said to the instructions he was trying to decipher. 

“Shiro is probably already asleep,” Pidge said. 

“Yeah, you’re right. Maybe we can have another game night on, like, an afternoon. But…”

Lance thought about it. Keith’s room was next door. He probably wasn’t asleep yet. He would most likely say no and shut the door on Lance, and then Lance would have to paste a smile on his face and walk back over and play a few rounds with Hunk and Pidge, pretending everything was fine but with a heavy heart. But he might also say yes. Lance had chickened out of asking things like this too often, and he wouldn't now. It was Christmas. Whatever. He clapped his hands on his thighs and got up. 

“Alright, I’m going to ask Keith.” 

* * *

There weren't a lot of Christmases Keith could remember with fondness. For most of his life, he didn’t understand why people celebrated it with so much joy, why they looked forward to it, why it was their favorite time of the year. The time for family. The time for love. Keith heard the words, but as a child, _family_ and _love_ meant nothing joyful to him. It was loss, melancholy, staring at the Christmas tree someone from the orphanage had decorated way too cheerfully, and remembering Christmas at home, with his Dad, and the one time they had actually had a Christmas tree. 

A gangly, brown one, not very pretty or lively at all, but for Keith back then, just turned five, it had been the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His Dad had procured a tattered box with Christmas ornaments, and had let little Keith run around the tree and place baubles where he wanted them, and he had shattered maybe more than he had put on branches, but he had giggled at it and his Dad had laughed and put away the shambles. And on Christmas Eve, they had sung songs together and ate twice as much as they usually did, and something in Keith had grown, brighter and fuller than it had been before. 

Ten years had passed until his next true Christmas, and there had been almost as many years in which he hadn’t spent it with someone he considered family. Christmas wasn’t the same with Shiro and Adam as it had been with his Dad, and Keith wasn’t the same person anymore, either. There was stress. Whisperings behind hands. And he still helped decorate the tree, and he still dropped a bauble, but this time, no one laughed at it. But that was fine, because it wasn’t funny to Keith anymore, either. He stared at the broken remains on the floor - it had been a pretty bauble, dark blue with an embedded snowy landscape - and wondered if anyone would laugh if he compared them to his life. Shiro sighed and handed him a dustpan, and he didn’t say it out loud. 

So, there wasn’t as much laughter and fun, and Keith was a little more grown and a little more broken, a little wearier: But there were good things to being older, too. Because now there were presents, and he could appreciate them. New gloves. Three books that Adam had caught him looking at in a bookshop. A pocketknife that was more a joke than anything useful, but he still smiled at it. And dinner was great, and he ate a lot, and afterwards he sat in his chair, full and happier than usual, even if not as happy as he had been then, and looked at Shiro and Adam, debating which of two equally cheesy Christmas movies to put on, and was content. If this was what his life was going to be - he was fine with it. 

Christmas on Naskö felt too weird to ever become a fond Christmas memory, even if it was already memorable, and Keith had almost broken another bauble. After dinner, they retreated to their own rooms for the night, in preparation for a tour of the city the next day. Keith closed the door behind him with a sigh. The planet was a lot to take in, but at least he liked his room. It was comforting that everything on Naskö had a color scheme and a clear theme. It made sense. Things on Earth, a lot of the time, hadn’t made sense for Keith. 

His room made a lot of sense: Maroon walls with faint gold accents, red furniture and a gold bedspread. It was smaller than some of the others, but cozy, with a large bed taking up most of the space, and a desk and chair in the corner. A door led to a bathroom, tiled in red, just big enough for a bathtub. Keith usually didn’t afford himself the luxury of comfort, not the luxury of sleeping or resting longer than he needed to, but here, maybe he would. Back still to the door, he allowed himself a yawn. 

He had barely changed into his pajamas - also red and gold, what a surprise - when someone knocked on his door. He froze in the middle of pulling on the second fluffy sock that came with the outfit. 

“Keith? You still awake?” 

Oh. Keith pulled the sock on all the way and swung the door open to Lance, a little hesitant but smiling, also in his Christmas mansion pajamas. His were light blue with embroidered silvery snowflakes. Keith wondered if he also looked as comfortable in his pajamas, and if the burgundy complimented his skin color that well. 

“What’s up?” 

He tried to keep all accusation out of his voice. Yes, he had been looking forward to crashing in his large, soft bed, but Lance had the room next to him, and if he needed something, this was the obvious place to come. 

“Oh, just wondering if you wanted to come over. I’m not really tired yet and there’s a set of board games in my room so-”

Lance's eyes shifted to the side as if there was something he wasn’t saying, and Keith was all awake again. His heart rate picked up. Board games maybe didn’t necessitate that, but Lance asking to play them with him late in the evening did. Keith wiped his hands on his pants - they weren’t sweaty, but just to make sure - and nodded. 

“Uh, yeah, sure.” 

He followed Lance to his room, and definitely didn’t smile at the melody he was humming and the spring in his step. 

Keith had seen Lance’s room in passing earlier, long enough to make out the color scheme. But as Lance led Keith into the room, he concluded that it was beautiful, tasteful, and it did suit Lance, but it felt too cold for him. The door clicked shut behind them. Hunk looked up from the bed, where he was setting out a board. 

“Oh, hey Keith! You came!” 

Pidge, across from him, minutely correcting placements of figures, glanced up. 

“Yeah, nice. We thought you’d already be asleep.” 

“Well, I’m not.” 

He sorted out a place for himself and sat at one end of the hexagonal game board, more forcefully than he probably should have, and disturbed the set-up again, which earned a low cry from Hunk and a sigh from Pidge. He didn’t know _what_ he had expected - it was not as if Lance had explicitly invited only him, and it made sense that they weren’t going to play a board game with two people. But there was still disappointment simmering in him. 

Lance sat across from Keith, legs crossed, and smirked at him, eyes twinkling. Keith narrowed his eyes back with a barely concealed smile. Reading Lance's expressions was easy, and this one said _try and beat me_ loud and clear. Maybe this was going to be just what Keith had expected after all. 

But there was no beating anyone or winning in the game they had chosen. At least, from what they understood from the instructions, and no one was very sure about the instructions. The translator didn’t work on them too well, as if they were intentionally written to be misunderstood and misconstrued. They made up their own game instead. With rules somewhere between Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit and the clock ticking ever closer to midnight, there were no regards for anything. Tears were shed - though they were mostly fake. And then Pidge cut her hand on one of the game pieces, and the drop of blood that landed in the middle of the board turned the cardboard slowly from red to green. 

They stared. 

“Was this… a blood sacrifice?” Lance murmured. Hunk clutched his arm. 

Keith reached for the instructions while Pidge stared at the board, blinking as if her brain was overwhelmed with the possibilities. 

“The true meaning of Christmas,” Keith said. 

They stared at him now. He shook out the manual, and there, in the centerfold, "The True Meaning of Christmas" was beautifully rendered. Mayhem broke loose, and with all the wheezing and laughter and limbs flying around, Keith didn’t know how he ended up on the floor. But that was the end to the night. Pidge’s wound was dressed, Lance cleared his bed, and Keith meandered towards the door. 

“Goodnight,” he said, just loud enough to not be a mumble. 

The others echoed the sentiment, Lance's voice the loudest of them. It carried Keith's smile until his own door closed behind him again. The king-sized bed was twice as inviting as it had been a few hours ago, and Keith dove under the covers until he was well smothered in blankets and everything around him was so soft, he couldn’t tell which way was up. His limbs were relaxed and his eyelids heavy, but his heart was, too. It wasn’t that he disliked spending time with Hunk and Pidge, or Hunk, Pidge and Lance as a trio. Keith hadn’t had multiple friends or a friend group ever, and theirs might have been forged by necessity, by war, but it was still friendship. 

But it stung that Lance never wanted to spend time with him alone. Probably it was something Lance didn’t notice, probably he already thought he was being nice enough by inviting Keith to hang out at all. And Keith knew Lance was a genuinely nice person, not someone to carry a grudge for no good reason or judge people, especially more than superficially, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that Lance didn’t want to be friends with _Keith_. Not really. Not one-on-one, close friendship where they told each other things in secret and invited each other to their rooms and maybe spent the night in each other’s rooms or beds sometimes - 

Keith grabbed the nearest of the ten pillows in his bed and smothered it over the back of his head. He groaned into the exceptionally fluffy mattress. Okay, so maybe he was thinking of something else than close friendship. Maybe he was thinking of something closer, wishing for it somewhere deep down, somewhere he could keep hidden most of the time, but not when he was alone and vulnerable to the hidden parts of himself. But Lance barely wanted to be friends with him, so thinking about or wishing for anything else wouldn’t lead anywhere. 

The next morning, Keith put on another striped sweater and headed to the dining room for breakfast. Through a slightly ajar door, the voices of Pidge and Hunk animatedly discussing something drifted to him. Keith steered his steps this way and swallowed against the bitterness rising at the memory of last night. He wasn’t supposed to be bitter. He’d had fun. 

Keith opened the door. In the daylight, the room looked twice as large, and the snow beyond the window reflected inside and glittered. Keith stopped right on the threshold and stared at the high ceiling and the table stacked with foods. Someone bumped into him from behind. 

“Sorry, didn’t see you there-”

At least Keith hadn’t been the last to breakfast, if Lance was still coming up behind him and saying something stupid like he hadn’t been able to see him - 

Keith moved out of the way quickly, into the room, to get some space between Lance and him. But moving was more difficult than he was used to, as if someone was clinging to his arm and holding him back, as if he was suddenly twice as heavy. He turned to glare at Lance, expecting him to have grabbed Keith by the sleeve and to now find him grinning impishly. But there was no hand on Keith’s arm, and all he found when he looked back were Lance’s wide eyes in his slack face, gaze moving to Keith’s arm. To both of their arms, side by side. Keith pulled his arm towards himself. Lance’s arm followed. Lance pulled back. Keith’s arm followed. 

There was only one way to summarize the situation. 

“What the fuck?” 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith and Lance find out what it will take to un-stick themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i said april in the last chapter note? i wasn't that far off i guess  
> there's a tiny mention of homophobia in this chapter! nothing major, but it is mentioned.
> 
> hope you enjoy :)

They had both spoken at the same time, and when Keith met Lance’s eyes, they were wide and unbelieving. Neither of them dared blink. Lance’s gaze shifted upwards. Keith thought he was blaming the sky, some kind of higher power up there. Then he looked. 

“Oh no,” he whispered. 

“Oh yes,” Lance whispered back, his voice tight. “This is what that Naskö-ian was on about yesterday.” 

Keith barely heard it. Above them, a bluish green plant was taped to the doorway, its tendrils reaching down towards them, and a cheery bright red ribbon tied around its branches. It was a mistletoe. He was standing in a doorway, under a mistletoe, with Lance. Keith. Lance. Mistletoe. Keith thought there must have been a dream of his that went something like this. They hadn't been stuck together in the dream, but it was close enough that blood was rushing to his face. He pressed his lids together and tried to banish the memory. This wasn't his small room late at night, where he could dream without consequence. This was real, and the alien mistletoe had stuck them together instead of laying a cultural claim on them to kiss. When Keith opened his eyes, Lance was staring at him. Something in his eyes made the dream difficult to wish away. 

“So, should we just –”

Lance shifted from one foot to the other. Keith looked back and forth between him and the mistletoe. 

“No,” Keith said. “No, absolutely not.” 

He wasn't sure why he had said it or what he was even answering to, but Lance was blinking, his brows furrowing. If he opened his mouth now, it would probably be to ask Keith why he didn't want to kiss him. And Keith did not know an answer to that question, because there wasn't anything reasonable he could come up with. 

One of the Naskö-ians almost stumbled into them and surged back immediately with frightened eyes. Keith stared back. His insides were twisting themselves apart. He didn't enjoy the thought of having to kiss Lance under these circumstances, but this Naskö-ian was acting as if they would have to do something worse than kissing. 

“W-wait here,” they stammered, already retreating, "I'm getting someone.” 

Keith crossed gazes with Lance and found the same anxious confusion he was feeling there. 

“Uh,” Lance said, “maybe we can try getting out of it ourselves?” 

Keith shrugged, then nodded. They didn’t have anything better to do. They stepped out of the doorway, into the breakfast room, where Hunk, Pidge and Shiro had been watching the whole exchange, stuck to their seats with open mouths. Keith pulled on his hand, twisted it to the side. He was stuck to Lance like iron to a magnet, but with enough force and Lance pulling in the opposite direction, he could get far enough that only their pinkies were touching. It only took a few seconds to exhaust them, and their hands plopped back together. Lance was breathing heavily. Keith grunted in distraught. 

“Uh, do you guys need help?” 

Keith shook his head at Hunk’s question. He could hear Pidge muttering something, but he didn’t want to look. 

“Okay. Okay,” Lance kept saying. 

“What?” 

It came out sharper than Keith had intended it to. He hoped the official would come any minute and show them they could do something easy to separate; clasp hands and say a poem or drink alien egg punch. His heart beat overdrive at the thought of having to kiss Lance, as if he was running away from something that would catch him anyway. He might have fantasized about kissing someone under a mistletoe, and that someone might sometimes have been Lance, but he had been a willing participant then, not forced and bound to Keith. The only thing that could have been worse was to be forced to tell Lance how he felt, without being able to choose the right moment, the right place and time. Or if he wanted to say it at all. Or how he really felt - because there was something, sure, but the words to describe it eluded him. 

“Do you wanna try switching it to the other hand?” 

Lance’s hopeful expression broke through the spiral in Keith’s mind, and he shrugged again. It was not like switching to the other hand meant they had a higher chance of getting loose, but trying wouldn't hurt. So, they rolled their arms against each other, then were pressed back to back. It was weird, to feel Lance’s back stuck to his, his shoulder blades moving as they turned to the other side. Someone giggled. A fork scraped across a plate. Keith clenched his jaw and wished for this all to be over soon. 

“Hey! It worked!” 

Lance was grinning, wiggling the hand that had just been stuck to Keith’s as if it was his Christmas present. 

“Yeah.” 

As if his other hand wasn’t stuck to Keith’s hand still. 

Because none of the officials had arrived to explain the situation yet, and they were both hungry, they sat to eat. Hunk helped them scoot their chairs closer together while Pidge and Shiro suggested what else to try. The unease in Keith's stomach wouldn't settle. Would this hinder the mission? What about Voltron? More than being stuck to his crush who didn't like him back and possibly being forced to kiss him, they would also disappoint the entire universe yearning to be free of the Galra. Because how were they supposed to pilot two different lions if they were stuck together like chewing gum to a shoe? 

Keith had just knocked something off his plate with Lance’s hand for the third time, when finally, a Naskö-ian official hasted into the room and demanded with a strained voice: 

“Who is it? Who got stuck by the Müske?” 

Keith raised his left hand. It was stuck to Lance’s right hand, which answered the question pretty thoroughly. The official slung his hand out to the side as if he was searching for something to hold onto. 

“Is this not part of your culture on Earth? Was there not an equivalent of every part of our traditions on your planet?” 

“There is, but usually, people don’t get stuck together,” Lance said. 

The official frowned as if he didn’t understand the concept of a mistletoe not sticking people together. He walked closer until he was standing as tall as possible in front of them, arms crossed. 

“Very well, the Müske is a highly revered plant on our planet, and used for all kinds of purposes, mostly for cultivating honesty and affection.” 

A cold dread gripped Keith at the words. Honesty and affection didn’t sound like the greatest words when he wanted to avoid both kissing Lance and telling him how he felt about him. 

“Our forefathers regarded the Müske as the only plant that values honesty and affection as much as the rest of us and deemed it worthy of elevating each household to a new cultural standard. Biologists have studied it for centuries and still have not determined just how it affects each –"

"Okay," Keith interrupted, "so what do we have to do to get out of it?" 

Lance sucked in a breath next to him as the official turned his rapidly blinking eyes to Keith. 

"The Müske," the official now intoned as if to an obtuse child, "attaches individuals who find themselves beneath it until they touch lips or share what they truly think of each other. If neither of these actions are undertaken, the Müske's effect will last for an indeterminate amount of time." 

The official attempted a smile, as if he didn’t expect the paladins to understand. Keith felt sick. He glanced at Lance: He was frowning, staring at the official. He didn't seem keen on it either. 

“So, we stay stuck together forever unless we either kiss or tell each other… what we think but never say?” Lance asked. 

“Not forever,” the official winced, “indeterminate means we do not know for how long. There have been cases were individuals were stuck together for less than two days. Some were stuck together for over a month. But, even in our long and illustrious history, there haven’t been a lot of cases where the subjects didn’t choose one or the other instead of waiting it out.” 

Meaning: Most people on this planet weren’t stubborn idiots. The same could not be said for Lance, and the same definitely could not be said for Keith, either. It would be a matter of who broke first – or who would convince the other first. Maybe it would have sounded fun, if it didn’t also mean having Lance literally by his side the whole time. Eating. Sleeping. In the bathroom. 

“Is there no other way?” Shiro asked. “We cannot lose these two for that long.” 

The official shrugged. 

“I’m afraid there’s no other solution. It’s kissing, talking, or waiting. Anyway, I expect all of you to meet me for the extended tour later.” 

He whisked out the door again, in a hurry to get anywhere else. If they were so horrified of getting stuck under one of these things with someone maybe they didn’t value affection and honesty that much themselves. 

“Well, that killed my appetite.” 

Lance let his fork clatter to the table. Keith silently agreed. Breakfast was over. Hunk was throwing them sympathetic glances, Pidge was muttering something about figuring it out, and Shiro was obviously preparing for a pep talk. 

The pep talk ended up consisting of: Coming to a stand in front of Keith and Lance as they were all heading out, laying a hand on a shoulder each, looking intensely from one to the other, and saying –

“I trust you to figure it out.” 

The town's snow-covered roofs glittered in the morning sun. Keith's breath blew clouds into the clear blue sky. He would probably have enjoyed it more without the heavy bag on his back – and without his wrist still bound to Lance's. Instead of a leisurely stroll, for their tour of the town, the paladins were supposed to hand out presents to every Naskö-ian child under ten years. They had each been handed a bag of därins: Tangerine-like neon orange fruit about the size of a palm. A full bag of därins on his back was surprisingly heavy; Keith was huffing before the official of the day had even led them halfway to the town. Being stuck to Lance hadn't gotten him out of it, and he couldn't even switch the hand that was holding onto the bag. 

He didn't want to ask Lance to stop and try. Getting changed while stuck to each other had been one of the most embarrassing things Keith had ever had to do, and by Lance's continued silence as they walked to town, he assumed it was the same for him. They needed to find a way to get rid of their attachment, but Keith wasn't ready to commit to either of the choices. Lance had thought differently. 

Just as Keith was pulling a thicker pullover over his head, trying in vain to keep out of the way of Lance's elbows, who was also wriggling into a different shirt, Lance cleared his throat. 

“So, I don’t know about you, but option two sounded a lot better than option one –”

Keith pulled his head free and spit out a strand of hair. 

“What? No.” 

“No? You’d rather kiss me than – that?” 

Lance sounded offended, but the words gave Keith pause. He hadn't meant that he preferred the kiss option, he had meant that he hated both options. But maybe he didn't hate one of them as much as the other one. 

"Yeah. It's just a kiss, you can't get that wrong." 

He laid all the conviction into his words that surely wouldn't be showing on his face. Maybe he'd already said too much, maybe he had already implied that there was something to get wrong about his true feelings for Lance. Maybe there wasn't – Keith knew how he felt about Lance and what anyone else would have called the feeling, but the knot of emotions inside of him was so intricate and interwoven that he couldn't believe a simple sentence like _I have a crush on you_ would ever really encompass it. So, no. There was definitely a lot more to get wrong about his feelings than about a kiss. And a kiss, without any words to go along with it, without an explanation or a declaration, was a lot more forgettable than a confession. 

Lance was pouting when Keith turned around, and he averted his eyes so he wouldn't be swayed. They went to the meeting point in silence, swaddled in jackets and scarves and bobble hats Lance had pulled from the shelves with increasing enthusiasm. The disappointed stares from everyone else were enough to make Keith a little uncomfortable, but not enough to sway his decision. 

The town was full of Naskö-ians on errands on a bright winter morning, and they all startled at Lance and Keith's attachment. No one but the officials said anything, but their disapproval was obvious. When one of them caught Keith's eye, he glared at her, and she looked away, flustered and ashamed. It didn't make him feel better, because it couldn't get rid of the cause, it couldn't make him and Lance agree. 

The children of this town loved the tradition of being gifted därins, and they loved it more if the paladins of Voltron gifted them. They also were curious about Lance and Keith being stuck. Behind the first door they knocked on, a small Naskö-ian child, about the height of their knees, stared up at them with round brown eyes and furrowed their brows at their bare wrists, clearly inseparable. They accepted a present from Lance's bag and held it with both hands but were still frowning. 

"Why are you walking around like that?" 

"Hm?" 

Keith rolled his eyes. Lance was leaning towards the child and smiling as if he didn't know exactly what they were asking. It was straining Keith's forearm. 

"We're waiting until it goes away," Keith told the child. 

Their wide eyes switched over to him and they tilted their head. 

"Goes away? It goes away when you kiss. Why don't you just kiss?" 

Keith swallowed. Yeah, why not? He looked at Lance. 

"Not everyone wants to kiss everyone else, and that's fine, right? No one should be forced to kiss because of a stupid plant hung in a stupid doorframe." 

Lance was still smiling at the child and didn't turn to Keith even when he looked at him out of the corner of his eye. They were the closest they had ever been, Lance's skin was burning cold against his in the Naskö winter chill, but he couldn't get a read on him. Was he talking about himself? Did he really just not want to be forced to kiss someone? That didn't seem like the Lance Keith knew, but maybe he didn't know him at all. 

Or maybe it was just Keith he didn't want to be forced to kiss. 

The child frowned again. 

"The Müske isn't stupid. And you don't have to kiss. You can also say 'I love you'. That's what my parents do when it happens with me." 

Keith's heartbeat stumbled. He hadn't thought about saying these words to Lance – at least not consciously, at least not awake – and it still wasn't what he thought summed up his feelings most honestly, but the child suggesting it so innocently made his anxiety spike. _This_ was why he would so much prefer to kiss Lance and get it over with. Even if he tried to ask questions later, there would be no way to tell whether Keith was saying the truth or not. 

Lance laughed awkwardly and changed the subject, and a minute later, the door was closed behind them and they turned to the next one. There was a whole street of identical houses before them, snow-covered roofs and lights glittering behind windows despite the early day. The two of them had double the households to visit as the other paladins, which was a logical result of their temporary union. But it was still twice the work for them. Keith sighed and hitched the bag higher on his shoulder. Lance shifted against him and blew a cloud of breath into the air. 

"Man, do you think all of the kids are going to be this inquisitive? I'm not sure I could stand that." 

Keith's jaw clenched. He knew _he_ wouldn't be able to stand it. 

"Let's hope not." 

Lance snorted his agreement and knocked on the second door. It was going to be a long afternoon full of awkward questions and awkward answers. 

While they had visited the children and given them the gifts, more snow had drifted down and enveloped the world in a new layer of white. Keith had seen snow before, but he could count the times on one hand. And he had never been a child, and never had the opportunity to do something fun with snow. A lot of Naskö-ian children were running around here, pelting each other with snowballs and letting themselves fall back into the softness, pushing each other over and building snow-Naskö-ians, not adhering to the strict politeness most of the adult Naskö-ians held themselves to. Keith wasn't a child anymore, but there was still a certain itch underneath his fingertips at the crunch of the snow. But his insides were already heavy, and the thought only made him sadder. He tried to bury the thought again. A snowball fight wouldn't happen as long as he was stuck to Lance. 

By the time Lance and Keith headed back to the meeting point with the others in the afternoon, Keith's bag was empty, but his back felt twice as heavy as it had in the morning. Lance was switching between groaning about his own back and humming a Christmas song one of the Naskö-ian children had sung. Keith's head still hurt from that one. He sighed. 

His wrist, where he was stuck to Lance, hurt more than his back. It didn't physically ache, but it was like an itch he couldn't get at, burning into his skin until it was unbearable. They hadn't made any progress on that front. Neither of them backed down. Stares from Naskö-ians and children only made it more difficult. Maybe it would have been easier to be stuck to someone else. It would have been awkward with each of them, to reveal what he thought about them, deep down, because Keith didn't put these kinds of things into actual words often. Actions spoke the loudest anyway. It would have been awkward, but doable. It didn't feel doable with Lance. It felt like he was waiting for the disaster, hands bound. 

But maybe he was beginning to understand what Lance was going through – because had he been bound to anyone else; he also wouldn't have wanted to kiss them. 

For dinner, two Naskö-ians brought a loveseat and a giant plate to share from for Keith and Lance. It was a little more comfortable than breakfast had been, but all the more embarrassing, because Keith's thigh was pressed against Lance's, and their hands kept touching no matter where Keith put his, and everyone stole glances at them. Something inside of Keith was burning, and he had to grip his fork tightly not to lean over and kiss Lance then and there. Just to finally get it over with. 

After dinner, they retreated to Lance's room for the night. Keith had been relieved to be free of the judging looks, but his heart sank again at the looming bathroom door. They had managed to avoid the situation in the morning by not talking about it – but the bathroom in Lance's room was large, and the toilet was opposite the door, and there was no way one of them would be able to stay outside. 

Keith sighed. 

"You sure you don't want to kiss me instead?" 

Lance shrugged. 

"It's just a bodily function." 

Keith turned away with his jaw clenched and didn't say what he was thinking – _and yet, you don't want to kiss me_.

Stubborn as ever, they managed. Maybe with burning cheeks and eyelids pressed together, but they managed. Washing hands and brushing teeth and washing other parts of themselves was an easy feat compared to the toilet debacle. They silently agreed that showering could wait another day, the Naskö-ians had very effective washcloths. 

With his face in a damp towel, nose full of the sharp cinnamon smell of the Naskö-ian soap, Keith let out a long breath. He was looking forward to sleep. If he were asleep, at least he wouldn't be able to think about the situation, though it was already better than it had been that afternoon. He and Lance still worked well together, even stuck to each other and in a stubborn battle of wills. It made him consider giving in, confessing, but every time the thought came up his stomach clenched, and he knew he couldn't do it yet. 

When Keith lifted his head out of the towel, the first thing his eyes focused on was the smile on Lance's face. It was the kind of smile he usually had when he could barely hold back a grin, and also usually, it didn't mean anything good. It was a mischievous little thing. Once upon a time, it would have made Keith clench his teeth and maybe his fist. Now, it just made him sigh, because he was tired, but there was a spark of anticipation in the pit of his stomach. 

"What?" 

He stood and reached to put the towel back onto its hook but kept his eyes on Lance. He had his other hand stuffed behind his back, and his grin pulled at his cheeks. 

"I have something for you." 

"Uh…"

"It's a present!" 

Lance held his free arm out from behind his back and lifted his fingers from the object he was holding, one by one. In the middle of his palm, there was a därin. 

"You kept one of them?" 

Keith reached out. The därin had looked like fruit to him the entire day, but in the light of the bathroom, there was something weird about them – the indentations of their compartments were too distinct, the skin a little too perfect. Underneath his fingers, the skin was uneven, small perforations lined the segments. It felt as if it would open if he'd press in just a little with a fingernail. 

Keith met Lance's eyes. He was full-on grinning now, and whatever reservations Keith still had, they were dwindling. 

"Come on," Lance said, "I really wanna see what's inside." 

On the light blue covers of the huge bed, the small neon orange non-fruit was almost comical. The strip of pre-perforated skin came off with a little bit of resistance when Keith pulled, and underneath, a piece of fabric was wedged into the compartment. Lance leaned over, and Keith pulled. As soon as it was free, it inflated, forming into a multi-colored ball that hopped around on the bed with barely any prompting. Keith stared at it, open-mouthed. A childish giddiness was rising in his chest. It felt a little like Christmas. 

"Oh man," Lance laughed, "now we actually do get some Christmas presents!" 

Even if they were for children, what they pulled out of the compartments was worth it for the surprise. They opened one in turns, Lance got a heated scarf, a music box that sang indecipherable Naskö-ian, and a headband with the ears of a Naskö-ian creature (like rabbit ears, but in light blue with white dots). Apart from the bouncy ball, Keith received the mittens belonging to Lance's scarf and a children's book he couldn't read, because the translator refused on the Naskö-ian written language, but still had fun flipping through for the colorful pictures. Keith missed real books. 

The presents did their job, as they did on Christmas on Earth: They were having fun, not thinking of the negatives for one happy moment. Lance wrapped himself in the scarf and put the headband on, and with his mouth and nose hidden and the ridiculously cute, and just as ridiculously out of place, bunny ears on his head, he looked like he was braving a snow storm on Easter morning. He tried to imitate a Russian accent, and it came out so butchered that Keith snorted, then laughed as the scarf slipped and took the headband with it. Lance's face underneath was red, probably because of the scarf's heating pad. But they were laughing: they were laughing together, and it was fine, and maybe all of this would blow over soon, maybe they would wake the next day and not be stuck anymore, or maybe Lance would finally change his mind and be okay with kissing. 

For now, Keith was still stuck to Lance, and they had to share the bed for the night, so they put the weird presents away and crawled under the blankets, and tried to decipher the first page of the Naskö-ian children's book. It was to no avail, but it made them giggle. And when Keith's eyes slipped shut more often, Lance took the book from his hands and turned off the light. 

Half an hour later, neither of them was asleep yet. 

Lance sighed. Keith was regretting having agreed to sleep in his room. Even though the bed was larger, the room had a cold atmosphere even when he couldn't make out the snowflakes on the walls. 

“You know, if you can’t fall asleep on your back, it’s your own fault for being so stubborn,” Lance whispered into the darkness. 

“ _I’m_ being stubborn?” 

Keith's voice came out a lot louder than Lance's. There was no question what he was talking about, and Lance raised his voice, too. 

“Yeah! Obviously the second option is a lot better than the first option! Even you have to be able to recognize that?” 

Keith stayed silent, but he crossed one arm over his chest. The other one twitched but was held steady in the middle between them by Lance’s arm. 

“Fine! If you refuse, I’ll just do it.” 

“What –”

Lance sat up, which forced Keith to lean into it a bit. Only a sliver of light shone through the blinds, a pale moonlight, but Lance was glowing with it. 

“The way I actually feel about you is –”

Keith heard the breath Lance took as loudly as if it had been his own, and his heart beat so fast it was a steady drum. 

“I think you’re really cool. Actually. And I want to be your friend. I think it would be awesome to be your friend, and I’ve thought that for a long time, but I don’t know _how_. You don’t make it easy. And I’ve begun to think maybe we’re just not meant to be friends, but I don’t want to accept that as the truth.” 

Lance gulped in air, and when Keith didn’t answer, he let himself fall back into his pillows with a dull thud. Keith clutched his own pillow with his free hand. His chest hurt, but his heartbeat was slowing down, and he didn’t know what the rushing in his veins was. 

“Keith? Did I break your brain by not hating you? Hello?” 

Keith breathed. Something was compelling him to say his truth as well, but he was still afraid, especially after what Lance had confessed. Keith was – he was happy about it. Happy that Lance wanted to be his friend. Ecstatic. But he didn’t know if Lance would still want it after what he would, now, inevitably have to respond. 

Lance took another breath, this one quieter, resigned. 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to be my friend. I get it. I know I’m… I can be a lot? I know I can be annoying and a little loud and mean sometimes… and that’s probably not the type of person you like to be friends with. I absolutely get it. But please tell me if you want to stay at a comfortable distance and just be teammates – say that, please, so you can at least go sleep in your own bed.” 

Keith’s throat was clogged, his heart so big it was like his whole ribcage was beating. Lance couldn’t be more wrong. He wanted to say – Lance, of course I want to be your friend. Yes, you’re not perfect, and you’re my antithesis in a lot of things, and I’ve never had a friend who was as _much_ as you are. But I’ve never had a lot of friends at all, so that doesn’t say a lot. And, actually, I want to be closer than friends. I want to be this close to you without anything forcing us. 

But what he said, voice louder and all the croakier for it, to the ceiling and not to Lance’s face, in the total darkness, was: 

“I don’t hate you. I like you.” 

It was enough to have his whole body burning just saying this much, and he squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Huh?” 

Lance sounded confused; not like he had understood Keith's meaning at all. He ground his teeth together, and when he opened his jaw, it was like pulling apart sticky caramel. 

“I have a crush on you!” 

After he shut his mouth with a resounding click, the room was quiet. Neither of them were breathing, until Lance whispered: 

“Oh.” 

Lance’s hand next to his twitched, their fingertips brushing, and Lance jerked back as far as he could go. He didn’t say anything, and a horrible idea overcame Keith, something he hadn’t considered so far. 

“Lance – if. If that makes you uncomfortable –”

“What! No, no it doesn’t make me uncomfortable.” 

His voice was too shrill and too sudden for that to be the whole story, and Keith narrowed his eyes at the ceiling. 

“I wouldn’t have expected you to be one of those people, but I guess if you are then there’s no way out of this.” 

Keith’s voice was biting. There weren’t a lot of them left on Earth, thankfully, a lot less of them than there used to be, but there surely still were people who didn’t at all like the thought of a boy having a crush on another boy. Keith had had to deal with some of them back home, and while he didn’t want to believe Lance could be one of them, the suspicion that he might be made his blood run ice-cold. 

Lance’s fingers, which had been dancing across the sheets next to Keith’s fingers, stilled. 

“What are you talking about?” he asked, voice serious. 

“Well, if you’re one of _them_ you surely wouldn’t want to kiss me.” 

Lance drew in a sharp breath and shifted on the pillow. Keith didn’t dare look over. 

“Really? I can’t believe you’d think something like that of me.” 

Lance's voice was quiet and resigned. Most of Keith's suspicion had gone, but he held on to the last thread of it. 

“You’re not disputing it.” 

“Oh, I definitely am! I’m not homophobic! I’m, like, the opposite of that.” 

Lance’s hand twitched uncontrollably, and his other hand, the free one, twirled around with enough force that some of the cold air hit Keith in the face. He pursed his lips. 

“The opposite of that would be gay.” 

He expected Lance to falter and stutter, but it only made him more agitated, his voice shriller. 

“Yeah, well, I’m bi so it checks out!” 

Keith blinked at the dark ceiling. The words were carving their way towards his heart, where they’d surely wreak havoc. But for now, he was stunned. Lance cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice was clearer and a lot quieter. 

“So, don’t ever call me homophobic again, okay? It kinda hurts.” 

“Sorry,” Keith mumbled. 

Lance sighed as an answer. In the silence, Keith tried to live with the giant, alive thing his heart had become in his chest. Lance began fidgeting again. 

“Okay, so, I’m not homophobic, but I was just. I mean, I still can’t believe it. You like me? Like – like that?” 

Keith swallowed the _unfortunately_ because Lance would have misunderstood, and nodded, so Lance would hear the movement of his hair against the pillow. No one wanted a confession to go this way – even Keith, who had no hope left, felt something pounding in regret, almost shame, inside of him. But at least Lance wasn’t disgusted, at least his voice was dipped in wonder, as if it were something tentatively good. 

“Oh,” Lance breathed out again, a whisper in the darkness. 

He swallowed, and Keith turned his head around to see Lance's shadow-eyebrows furrow. 

“Then, if you said the truth, why are we still stuck together?” 

Keith's mouth fell open to dispute it – he had said the truth, he'd felt it down to his bones – but when he tried to move his hand from Lance's, it was still a momentous effort. They were still stuck. 

“Have you considered that maybe you hate me after all?” Lance tried to joke. 

Keith’s mind was wandering to darker places. 

“Maybe they lied to us. Maybe we’re not getting out of this alone. Maybe this is all a trap, and they’re just acting like Christmas to throw us off the trail.” 

Lance snorted. 

“Yeah, no. Have you taken one look at them?” 

Keith made a sound at the back of his throat. He had taken a look at them. But the most innocent-seeming people could sometimes be the worst of them. 

“It’s more likely that one of us didn’t tell the complete truth, or something. Maybe we should go again –”

“No. No, definitely not.” 

Keith turned to his other side and crossed his arms, heedless of Lance’s hand. Maybe Lance’s arm being stuck under his, and his squawk as he was tugged against Keith’s back was a bonus. After a bit of struggling and huffing, Lance went limp and mumbled: 

“Come on, you don’t want to go into more detail about what you like about me?” 

Keith made a sound close to a growl, and he could feel Lance's laugh as a huff of warm air between his shoulder blades. His stomach was knotting itself into burning knots. Lance was so warm and solid against his back, and even with his arm tucked tightly across Keith's chest, he could have fallen asleep just like this. But he couldn't. Lance was too close, and he couldn't get used to it. He gritted his teeth and rolled onto his back again. 

“Let’s figure it out in the morning,” Keith mumbled. 

Lance gave an approving yawn. 

Keith closed his eyes. His limbs were heavy and his head full of fog, and his heart exhausted. But one thought still kept him awake: Maybe it wasn’t the Naskö-ians luring them into a trap. Maybe there was something else – something about human or half-Galra physique, something about them as paladins, something in the specific mistletoe that had bound them – something different. Maybe they would have to kiss, after all, to get free. Or maybe they would be stuck forever. In either case, there was only one option left to try, because Keith knew he had spilled his feelings from the very depth, and Lance seemed to think so too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me know what you thought!
> 
> unfortunately i have no estimate when the last chapter will be ready, but i'll try my best to finish it before christmas :')


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance has a revelation, but it takes him a while to get there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost a year after the first chapter was posted and about two years after I had this idea, finally, it's finished. This is pure self-indulgence but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. It's a bit too late to say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays now, but I hope this counts as a present to my readers! I appreciate every single one of you <3

Lance blinked awake to a cold, foggy morning shining through a slit in the curtains. There was a crick in his neck, but his limbs were warm and heavy. He yawned and tried to stretch, but something was keeping him down, like a weighted blanket. He blinked again. Dark hair was obscuring his vision – Keith was lying on top of him. He was still asleep, and one of his hands was curled around Lance’s left one above his heart. 

His heart skipped a beat, then a rush of breath escaped him. The night before came back in bits and pieces. Lance had fallen asleep in one of the most uncomfortable positions he had ever been in – back and neck stiff, his arm stretched out to the side at an unnatural angle. This was a much more comfortable position. Lance yawned and wondered why he hadn’t suggested cuddling the night before. The memory crept up on him – the words, and the tone Keith had said them with. Keith had confessed to him, after Lance had gotten over himself to admit he wanted to be his friend, and now he was lying on top of him. Lance’s heart beat painfully in his throat. He’d been rejected enough times to know how it hurt, how it ate you up from the inside and made you shrivel - though Keith didn’t shrivel, and the rejection had been a lot softer than some of what Lance had experienced. And then Lance had come out to him, which added to the pile of things that made him want to crawl out of his skin and hide in the bathtub. 

Before Lance could contemplate if he should accept the situation or try and push Keith off to the side to pretend he had never rolled onto Lance in the night, Keith was stirring awake. 

“Mmmh?” 

Lance bit his lip to keep the sudden glee in check. The sound was too soft, too cute to have ever come out of Keith’s mouth, and he was warming inside that he had been the one to hear it. Keith lifted his head and met Lance’s eyes. The confusion in his gaze, the hazy veil over his eyes, lifted after one blink. Then he was scrambling back, mumbling something incoherent that sounded like an apology. 

Because they were still stuck together, Lance was tugged upright with a frantic Keith, who stared at him, uncomprehending, until his gaze landed on their still-intertwined, and definitely also still stuck-together hands. 

“Oh,” Keith said, “I’m sorry.” 

Lance swallowed the clog in his throat and tried a smile. 

“For what? Cuddling? You don’t have to be, it was comfy. And warm.” 

Keith didn’t answer, just looked away and rubbed the fingers of his free hand together. He was more embarrassed than the situation warranted, and Lance didn’t understand why, until Keith threw him a quick glance from underneath his bangs. Oh, right. Cuddling up to your crush while you were asleep in the same bed must be more embarrassing than doing the same thing with a barely-friends teammate. Or maybe it should have been less embarrassing? Whatever. Most importantly – Keith had a _crush on him_. It just didn’t sound real. It didn’t feel like it ever would. Keith cleared his throat and lifted his head, his jaw set but his voice still quiet. 

“It really didn’t bother you?” 

There was something else behind his words, something that probably came down to the feelings part of it all, but Lance didn’t know how it should change about how he felt about all of this. 

“Nah. I’m a cuddly person, I don’t mind that stuff.” 

Keith threw him a suspicious glance but didn’t say anything else about the topic. They got dressed in silence – or as silent as they could be, when they had to twist and turn to get each body part separated at the appropriate time, and also prevent looking at each other too much. Another public appearance was scheduled, which meant they would be meeting the officials soon, and Lance could ask if there were any special cases. If they’d known of a group of people stuck together who told each other their true thoughts and feelings and still weren’t let go. He was sure he had told the truth yesterday. He _did_ want to be Keith’s friend, and he admired him a whole lot. And it didn’t seem like Keith had lied either, with how he was acting now, how he had acted yesterday. But if neither of them had lied, there had to be something wrong with the mistletoe. 

  
  


The world outside was still wondrous and wintery. Lance hadn’t been paying much attention to their schedule of the day, mind still somewhere on the solution of their little problem, but he felt like it was a good sign that the ground was still covered in snow. A group of Nasköians accompanied them to town, but they didn’t look like the officials they had been dealing with the days before. They were younger, weren’t wearing the ridiculous hats, and they talked among themselves, not as if every step they took was to please the paladins. 

When there was a lull in the conversation of the two young Nasköians walking next to Lance and Keith, Lance sidestepped to approach them. Keith huffed a bit as he was tugged along. Lance payed him no mind and turned on his most charming smile. 

“Excuse me?” 

“Hm?” 

The young Naskö-ian turned her wide eyes towards Lance, brows raised. His teeth hurt from the cold, but he kept his smile. 

“Hey, uh, just wondering if you had any tips? Pointers? Anything?” 

He raised his wrist where he was bound to Keith. The Nasköian’s eyes flit over to their joint hands, but she didn’t look surprised, or like she was thinking over a solution at all. 

“Well, you were told everything about how the Müske works, weren’t you? You can wait it out, or you can take one of two poss- “

“Yep, heard that one already.” 

She blinked. The snow crunched underneath their feet. Lance’s smile was fading, either because the Nasköian wouldn’t have a different answer for them, or because Keith was pulling at his hand as if he were trying to separate them by sheer force. 

“There’s nothing else, I’m afraid.” 

Lance sighed, thanked her, and relented to Keith’s pull, who had accelerated his steps to twice his earlier tempo. Lance was doing his best to keep up, but it was difficult in the snow, and he kept stumbling. 

“Will you slow down? No one is chasing us,” he finally snapped. 

Keith grumbled something under his breath but slowed down a little. 

“What was that?” 

“You know exactly what the solution is.” 

Keith’s voice was almost a hiss, and Lance swallowed. He did know, kind of, but he wasn’t ready to accept it as a last resort yet. There had to be something else – another solution to their mess that didn’t make his insides feel all twisted up and his heart so heavy. Keith carried on without prompting, and his voice was still low and biting. 

“You just had to go and make it weird. If you hadn’t been so fixated on confessing to me that you want to be my friend and forced me into actually confessing… now it’s awkward. We could’ve just kissed and forgotten about it.” 

“I _forced_ you?” 

Lance heard the words as if someone else had spoken them, choked up. 

Keith wheeled around. 

“I didn’t mean it like that. You know what I meant. It’s just… I never wanted to say it, not like that, and now it’s… like this.” 

He held Lance’s gaze, whatever he saw in Lance’s frozen face must not have been better than before because he added, quietly: 

“Sorry.” 

They walked the rest of the way in silence. Lance did not feel better in any single way. He’d found it equal parts funny and annoying, at first, to be stuck to Keith. He had thought, no matter what, they would emerge with a better understanding of each other, a tighter friendship. Now, it felt like the opposite was going to be the case, and the threat hardened into an icy shard in his heart. Maybe it was better to end this before it got worse. 

But Lance didn’t want to kiss Keith. To get out of the Müske. He didn’t want to kiss him to get out of the Müske. He just didn’t know exactly _why_ he didn’t. He wished he could put it into words, or some kind of definite feeling, so he could tell Keith he was wrong, at least. Keith thought he had put Lance off the night before, and he didn’t want to kiss him now because he knew Keith liked him. But he was wrong. That was the only thing Lance was sure about. He hadn’t liked the thought before, hadn’t let himself think of the possibility. They couldn’t kiss. And now he knew Keith liked him –though he had to remind himself every two minutes that it hadn’t been some ill-advised dream – it didn’t feel much different. If anything, he had been considering the possibility in a bit of a more positive light. Only because they’d tried the other one already, of course. But still. Keith was wrong with whatever he was assuming about Lance. Too bad that Lance didn’t have an alternative explanation either. 

This day, the paladins were assigned to handing out presents again, but they weren’t going from door to door. Instead, the younger Naskö-ians had built a tower of wrapped gifts in the center of the city and were still in the process of building it higher when the paladins approached. The giftees also weren’t children this day. They were older Naskö-ians with wrinkles lining their grateful smiles and grey hair peeking out beneath their colorful hats, and some younger parents with two, three, five children. They were the less fortunate, rallied together in some kind of charity event. It was sweet, something right in the Christmas spirit, but it also felt a little weird to Lance. Shouldn’t a planet such as this utopia have gotten rid of poverty ages ago? Even if they hadn’t tampered with the Müske, something about this planet wasn’t right beneath all the snowy cheer. 

Or maybe it was just that no matter how often he bent to the small hands reaching out for a present, no matter how often he stretched to get the largest, the pinkest, or the one with the most glitter, his heart didn’t warm. Keith was still quiet, and there was still this shard of ice that pierced Lance every time he moved. 

The mountain of presents was gone sooner than Lance had expected. Hunk gave the last one over to an old Naskö-ian lady with a bright smile, and Pidge was already sitting in the snow behind him. Lance kind of wanted to make a snow angel, but one glance at Keith out of the corner of his eye shut that idea down instantly. He was still frowning at his shoes. Not in the way that screamed he needed to be cheered up. In the way that told Lance he wanted to be alone – an impossible wish at the moment. 

In the lull where none of them knew if they could go back to the house on the hill, another Naskö-ian clapped her hands. 

“Now! It is time for what you all have been waiting for?” 

Lance looked up and found Hunk’s eyes. His eyes were as wide and anticipatory as Lance felt, so he mouthed _dinner_? at him. Hunk bit down on his grin, but Lance didn’t hide his. At least he hadn’t fucked up his friendship with everyone yet. 

“The Snow Battle!” 

The surrounding Naskö-ians broke out in whoops and hollers. Maybe this was the real reason all the young people were interested in charity. Lance shook his head. He was thinking like an old person now. The group of Naskö-ians walked around and split them into teams, but one came to a stand in front of Lance and Keith, raised their eyebrows to a sad triangle above their nose, and shook their head. 

“I mean, you can participate if you want to… but maybe it would be better if you just got out of the way.” 

They moved on without another word, but Lance found Keith looking back at him incredulously. Something hot sparked in his stomach, and he knew they were thinking the exact same thing. 

“Let’s show them who needs to get out of the way.” 

Keith nodded, brows drawn tight. 

“If this is anything like a snowball fight – “

He didn’t need to finish the sentence. If it were anything like a snowball fight, they’d both be a little bit out of their element, but also enough exactly in their element that it would be all the others who would need to get out the way. 

And – it was exactly like a snowball fight on Earth if Lance had ever participated in one. He hadn’t, but he’d dreamed of it often enough, and the space spore ball fight had been close enough. There was no objective, nothing to win, exactly. It was about pelting all the other people with as many snowballs as possible and trying not to get hit in the process. And it was so much fun it almost managed to turn Lance’s opinion of the whole planet around. After what they had seen some of the Naskö-ian groups do, Lance and Keith built a low wall of snow to duck behind – a little difficult at first with only three hands instead of four, but they made do. Once they had ducked behind their wall, they slid their connection to their ankles, without looking or talking about it, just with a nod, which sent another hot shock of something to where the ice shard was quickly melting away and formed snowballs. 

“Okay. One – two – three – now!” 

Lance wasn’t quite as good at throwing as he was at shooting, but it was still better than sitting around watching. And it didn’t matter, anyway. Because he was finally warm. Light spilled from cozy living rooms into the slowly darkening sky , and there was laughter all around him, and Keith was laughing, too, right next to him. 

Half an hour later, their little fort was trampled down and they were soaked to the bone, but Lance let himself fall back into the snow without a care, and when he moved his arms up and down, Keith didn’t protest at all. He tried his best to make his own snow angel, even, and when Lance looked over, Keith had his head already turned in his direction, and there was a smile on his face without any trace of resentment. It was small, and soft, and his eyes were shining in the evening light. 

Lance was reminded of Keith’s confession with a jolt, but he didn’t look away. Maybe it should have been uncomfortable, but it wasn’t at all. He could have kept looking. 

Keith was the one who looked away. Lance stared at the snow melting in his hair for a second more and then turned away, too. He couldn’t make sense of his thoughts anymore. 

They got up and shook the snow from their clothes, and another Nasköian approached them with a wide smile on her face. 

“You two are so cute. But if I may ask, why are you still bound?” 

Lance felt Keith stiffen next to him, while he himself did the opposite. He threw himself into frenzied denial, pulse in his throat as if there was something of importance to deny. 

“Haha, thanks. Cute, like, individually, because we’re not” – he waved his hand around in the air in no specific pattern at all, and Keith’s hand at his other side stiffened into a fist – “yeah. Thanks though. We’re not really ready to, uh, try it all, if you know what I mean.” 

Lance’s cheeks felt much too warm for something stupid like this. The Naskö-ian was staring back, her mouth open in a little _o_ before she came back to her senses. 

“Oh. I’m sorry for assuming. You’re just so comfortable with each other, and you work very well together.” 

Keith made a noncommittal noise next to him and to keep himself from overthinking it, Lance let his mouth run away with him again. 

“Sure. Do you have any other idea how to get out of it?” 

Bewildered, she shook her head. 

“There’s no trick, I’m afraid. Just honesty.” 

_Honesty_. The word haunted Lance all the way back to the mansion. Now, there was less of the tension between Keith and him. They were silent, listening to the Nasköians and the other paladins chatter, but it wasn’t a hostile silence. It would almost have been comfortable, if all the external tension hadn’t now been warring inside of Lance. 

Lance knew he hadn’t lied the night before. But he was also thinking about the word honesty and about how maybe it wasn’t just about not lying, it was about the whole, entire truth. The more he thought about it, the more he doubted he had ever told the whole, entire truth about anything in his life, ever. About some things, he hadn’t admitted the whole, entire truth to himself. And if this was one of those cases, then there would be no use trying to reach deep inside of himself to find out what he was hiding, because he wouldn’t find anything there. And then there would truly only be one option left, and Lance couldn’t kiss Keith like this. He couldn’t kiss him because of this. That – and he knew it without knowing the why – would be dishonest. 

It was a terrible stalemate. Keith contributed nothing but his steady presence at Lance’s side: A comfort and yet the source of his discomfort. 

Another feast awaited them back at the mansion, and the room was full and decked out in even more Christmas decorations than before. There were Müskes spread everywhere, now, and Lance forced himself not to avoid them. Nothing that hadn’t already happened could happen. 

From his place at the table decked out in red and gold, shoving hot pieces of something that crossed the best of broccoli and chicken into his mouth, he had a front row view of how the young Nasköians treated the Müskes. It didn’t seem like a tradition of love and honesty; it was like a cheap Valentine’s tradition, like mistletoes were on Earth, only with more of a bond involved. Couples treated it like a game to get each other to say “I love you” – even if Lance never heard the words, it was clear from how two people, arms wrapped around each other, leaned into the other, how some sort of inner glow transformed their faces when they really meant the words. Some singles treated it like a game to catch their crush underneath one and get a kiss out of it, if not a confession. 

Any other day, Lance would have found it cute. This day, it was a little nauseating. He put his fork down after only one helping, though it was delicious, and he’d been starving from the day outside in the snow. Why couldn’t it have been like _this_? 

He stared at the crumbs left on his plate. The thought was there. He couldn’t will it away, but he also didn’t know what to make of it. Lance didn’t want to have one of these sappy moments with _Keith_. He didn’t want to slowly chase him around the room in a weird game of chess until they bumped into each other beneath a Müske. He didn’t want to look into his eyes while he bit down on the triumphant grin before they kissed. There was a bit of jealousy swimming in the pit of his stomach, but it was probably because it was so easy for all of them. They all had it figured out. And even if they hadn’t, the universe wouldn’t be in grave danger if two stubborn Nasköians were stuck together for longer than they should have been. 

But if that was all he was jealous of, why was his gaze still drawn to the happy, giggling couples? 

Lance was lost in senseless spiraling thoughts for the rest of dinner and answered and laughed along with the others without remembering a single word. What options were left? Was it possible that Keith had lied after all? He had been pretty convincing in his confession, but Lance knew best that it was possible to be absolutely sure of something yourself and still be wrong about it. Maybe he had been lonely and latched onto the first available person, which happened to be Lance. Maybe he had never had feelings for someone before and confused a friend crush with a real crush. Maybe. But no matter if it had been the truth or not, Keith was adamant about it, and Lance wasn’t about to question him. Instead, he kept questioning himself. 

After dinner, he walked up the stairs with Keith, and there were still couples spread out under Müskes in nearly every doorway, and he avoided looking at them, but he still felt their lovesick glances as if it was him they were after. 

If Keith had been telling the truth, then that had to mean Lance had been lying, and he resented that option. He didn’t hate Keith, that much he knew, and he never had. He’d always wanted to be his friend. He had never thought he would be good enough for someone like Keith, someone so much higher up the food chain than him. Even at the lowest, Lance had still admired Keith, in that painful, hopeless way, the way that almost felt like –

Lance missed a step, and Keith’s hand right there next to him was the only thing that kept him from face-planting. 

“You alright?” Keith asked as he hoisted him back up. 

There was actual concern in his voice. Lance kept his head down; his cheeks were burning. 

“Yup.” 

He kept walking, but his heart was still hammering in his chest. _Painful and hopeless admiration_ \- it didn’t just sound suspicious. It had also, then and now still, felt like a crush. 

He hadn’t considered it until then. It was just an inkling in the back of his mind, nothing solid or proven. But what if he did reciprocate the feelings? Without knowing, without being aware of it? Would that count as a lie? 

Then Lance considered telling Keith and shut down almost immediately. Impossible. He walked a little faster. Maybe it was another possibility. Another way to try to separate them, and he did want to be separated. He didn’t dislike spending time with Keith, but he disliked having to spend every minute attached to him. But it didn’t seem worth it to attempt telling Keith he reciprocated his feelings when the thought had just crept up, unannounced, and he had no idea if there was any truth to it. No matter what the positive outcome could be. The negative outcome would be that both of them would know for sure Keith’s feelings were unrequited, and that Lance had lied to get out of it. Lance would know he couldn’t trust himself. And then they would have no choice but to kiss and would never find out what they really thought of one another, if maybe the whole thing would have been fake, and they would never be friends. They would stay teammates until the war ended, spending time with each other when necessary, Keith would get over Lance and leave to do something awesome, alone, without Lance, or worse, with someone better than Lance, who never mistook a feeling, and who held Keith’s hand without a magical mistletoe forcing him to. Because they wouldn’t be friends. And they definitely wouldn’t be boyfriends. 

They went to Keith’s room. It was smaller than Lance’s, but also cozier, warmer, and had a much larger bed. Lance grinned as he saw it, but then remembered it would do them no good anyway. They were stuck together. A large bed was as good as a small one. Keith tugged on his hand toward the closet and changed without a word. They took turns getting ready in the bathroom - also in warm colors, also relatively small. This time, Lance didn’t fully turn away, and watched Keith brush his teeth, and watched as his hair got in the way time and time again. Lance had never seen Keith with his hair back. Maybe he didn’t own any hair ties. But his hair was long enough that he would have to keep it out of his face - for washing, for brushing his teeth, sometimes probably for eating. Keith lifted their joined hands to push the longest part of his bangs behind his ears, and Lance’s hand brushed against some of Keith’s hair. It was soft like satin, shiny and strong and the darkest, most beautiful black. But still too long to brush teeth without a hair tie. And also too long to sleep with it open and untamed. Lance frowned. There had been a lot of hairs on the pillows in his bed this morning, hair too long to be his own. He kept his right hand, attached to Keith’s left, up, and pushed his hair back. Keith met his eyes as if to say _thanks, but also, what_? 

Lance smiled as a response. 

“We’re going to get you a hair tie.” 

Ten minutes later, Keith was frowning at Lance, who had already sat on the bed. As best as he could anyway, with Keith still standing. Lance patted the bed in front of him with his free hand and smiled wide. 

“But… you’ll need two hands.” 

“Yeah.” Lance had obviously thought of that and rolled his eyes. “If you’re gonna sit in front of me anyway, we can switch it to our thighs.” 

Keith didn’t look convinced but sighed and sat. He was close enough that his presence warmed Lance, almost back to chest, and whatever shampoo they were supplied with of this planet smelled amazing on him. Lance snapped the green-and-red striped hair tie on his wrist with one finger. His hands were getting sweaty. Not the ideal beginning for a braiding session. But he ignored it, grabbed Keith around the waist and scooted backwards, until his feet were no longer on the ground. He got a beautiful yelp in return that made him giggle into Keith’s shoulder. He was a solid weight in Lance’s arms, a real person, warm and breathing and alive, and gorgeous, but it was also just Keith. Just Keith had a thin hard shell and was dorky and awkward and sweet underneath, and for a long time Lance had thought people like him didn’t exist, couldn’t exist, and to believe there was anything else than the exterior he was presenting was wishful thinking. But there was. There was so much underneath a barely-friend like Lance couldn’t begin to grasp it, but the hint of it was there, and it made him smile and he wasn’t sweating anymore. This was just Keith. There was nothing to be afraid of when he was braiding just Keith’s hair. 

“Okay,” he warned Keith, loosened his arms from around his waist and scooted back a little, “I’ll separate us now.” 

Keith nodded, and let out a little sigh, his head turned so he could watch as Lance slid their pinkies apart, their wrists together, then their forearms. His shoulder pressed against Keith’s, and their breath was synchronized, the same, like they were sharing a pair of lungs. He leaned back and felt as his thigh tingled to his knee, where he was connected to Keith now. His side was burning, his whole body sparking, something new in his veins he couldn’t name. Keith’s head was still turned, but his eyes were lidded, focused somewhere on the bedspread, and he was breathing heavily, flushed. Whatever he was feeling, Keith was, too. 

Lance didn’t feel qualified to speak, so he took the hair tie, turned Keith’s head gently to the front, and started combing through his hair with his fingers. He’d only touched one lock before, and determined it was soft, but touching all of it was like a different world. Something settled deep in Lance’s stomach. He knew without knowing the words, but swallowed it, and began braiding. Keith let out another sigh, a little louder, a little more content. It made Lance smile. This was to keep hair off the pillows and to help Keith’s hair look the best it could, yes, and it was because Lance was aware, somewhere in the deep dark corners of his mind, he had always wanted to touch Keith’s hair for as long as he liked, but it was also because it was more comfortable for Keith. It was certainly more comfortable to sleep that way, especially if he preferred sleeping on his side or his back. And the process seemed to be comfortable, too. Keith’s posture relaxed, his shoulders slumping until Lance could feel his thigh pressing against his, falling open. Lance’s smile became painful at that. 

He was practiced at braiding and it didn’t take more than a few minutes to get Keith’s hair where he wanted it to be, to tie the hair tie around the ends of his hair. But he didn’t want to be finished. He didn’t want to leave the position and scoot out from behind Keith. He wanted to keep sitting there, hands in Keith’s hair, for as long as he would be allowed. And something about this room, something about the atmosphere, something about Keith’s thigh stuck to his, tingling against his, and his back slowly sinking against Lance’s chest as if he was falling asleep, made him do just that. He kept one hand in Keith’s hair, pushing his fingers in, careful not to disturb the braid. Keith made another sound of enjoyment and sank further against Lance. He must have been falling asleep. Just this morning he’d been jumping up at discovering he had rolled onto Lance in his sleep and now he was conscious, cuddling back against Lance. It made something large and happy swell in Lance, accomplishment, fulfillment, like he had rarely felt. He put his free arm around Keith and pulled him back, until he could hook his chin across his shoulder and squeeze. 

“Lance,” Keith brought out, “what are you doing now?” 

He sounded like he had really almost been asleep, now a little frantic at the situation they were in, his voice rough and deep, but still soft. Still like was enjoying it but didn’t want to let himself. 

Keith was the same size as Lance and squeezing him was work. He didn’t fit between Lance’s legs perfectly, not like a puzzle piece to another puzzle piece. But he was warm and heavy and he smelt and felt like Keith, and his hair tickled Lance’s nose and his chest rose and fell with his breath and his jaw tightened when he swallowed and tried to turn his head to look at Lance. Something was happening. Lance swallowed around it. He knew what he had to do, what he had to say. He _had_ known, really. Had been too much of a coward to do anything about it. But now, when there was almost everything on the line of how well he knew himself, he was going to do it. He couldn’t stand it anymore. 

He took a deep breath. 

“Keith. Before I say anything else, I wasn’t lying yesterday, okay? I do want to be your friend.” 

“What are you-”

Keith was wriggling, trying to get out of Lance’s grip. If it had come down to strength, Lance knew he stood a small chance, but Keith settled when he noticed Lance was serious, wasn’t letting go. He kept his head turned to the front, as if he could feel Lance’s frantic heartbeat against his back, as if he knew turning around, eye contact, being scrutinized, would stop Lance from ever saying the words out loud. 

“So, I wasn’t not telling the truth then. But maybe I wasn’t telling the whole truth. Not because I didn’t want to, but because - because I didn’t really know myself?” 

Keith was breathing steadily, but harshly, as if he was forcing himself to, and his right hand was clenched atop his thigh, just-so touching Lance as well. Lance looked at their legs, stuck together, blinked, and it wasn’t his own leg anymore. He was an outsider in his own body, exorcised by his wildly rushing blood, speaking the words as if he knew they were true, when he could just hope. 

“I like you, too. I think that’s what the mistletoe wanted to hear.” 

A stinging relief brought Lance back into his limbs. It was a short-lived relief, because Keith wasn’t reacting, only his breathing was speeding up, and Lance unwound his arms from around his waist, scooted back as far as he could, his heart dropping somewhere below his stomach. Well, there, he’d fucked it up, they were still stuck and would be for an eternity now - but his leg came backwards with the rest of his body, shin and foot included. Lance held it in the air, stunned. Shook his arm. Then the other arm. He was sitting on the bed, not connected to Keith, all his limbs on their own again. His blood rushed, in a mixture of relief and regret. Because it was nice to have his body back to himself, but - but. The realization of what had caused this, what it meant, came over him, made his hands drop to the bedsheet and his head lift and there Keith was, turning slowly, his mouth slack and his eyes wide, as if he, too, had just realized. 

Lance just stared as Keith stared back, trying to get a hold of the tingling underneath his skin, his chest too wide for his body. Keith blinked, and a smile spread over his face, a true, wide smile that encompassed his whole face, and Lance couldn’t help but smile back, and then Keith was vaulting forward, knocking Lance over into the mass of pillows, laughing into his neck, and then they were kissing. 

Keith’s lips on his were the last broken seal on the truth, because there was no way he was imagining his heart thumping heavily and his limbs growing numb and how he felt so happy he might have been floating when Keith pressed his smile against his. It wasn’t a long kiss, but Lance pulled Keith back in as soon as he lifted his head, pulled him back in for another, slower, deeper kiss. As long as they were kissing, he didn’t have to think about what would come after. As long as they were kissing, there was too much to even think, the whole of Keith’s weight, warm and present on top of him, his soft lips and his hesitant teeth and tongue and his hands, one clenched on Lance’s shoulder and the other resting behind his neck, fingers curling into his hair. Lance slid his fingers into Keith’s hair, hooked an ankle around the back of his leg, and pulled. He didn’t want to let go. 

Half an hour later, Keith had slid off Lance, and though he hadn’t gone far, they weren’t touching anymore. Maybe that was a good thing. They had been touching a lot, after all, for a long time at first and then for a short time, but a lot at once. Lance was still melted into the pillows, but in a good way. He didn’t know now why he had been afraid of after the kiss. After the kiss meant his insides were soft and sugary sweet, and his lips were swollen, and his tongue was too lazy to form any of the non-existent thoughts in his head. There was nothing but this bed and Keith in there. Lance closed his eyes with a sigh and a smile. 

“Hey,” Keith whispered, suddenly close again. 

It was the first time either of them had spoken since the kiss. Since the confession, really, because there might have been words during the kiss, but they hadn’t been _spoken_. Lance blinked his eyes open again and turned his head to the side. Keith was propped up on one elbow, looking at Lance with lidded, hesitant eyes. He was still flushed and his lips too red and his braid was less of a braid, more of a mess of hair held together loosely by a hair tie. That was Lance’s work. His fingers had made the braid, and his fingers had undone it again. The sight and the blush that resulted from it distracted him from Keith’s words. 

“…would that be okay?” 

“Uh, sorry, repeat that?” 

Keith wasn’t frowning or rolling his eyes like Lance had expected, he fixed him with his large dark eyes and smirked as if he knew exactly what had distracted Lance. 

“You can try the braid again tomorrow. Anyway,” he got shy again, turned his gaze away and plucked at the bedsheet, “I know we just got done with the whole stuck-together thing and this bed is a lot larger than yours, but. Can we cuddle again?” 

Lance couldn’t help the chuckle that escaped him, because Keith had said 'cuddle', and he was pouting, both as if he couldn’t believe he had said the word, and as if he would be disappointed if Lance said no. He should have known there was no way Lance would ever say no to a question like that. 

“Come here,” he said and opened his arms wide. 

Keith flung himself forward into Lance’s arms and let out a noise of sleepy contentment, and Lance closed his eyes and smiled and wrapped one arm around Keith. 

“You know I’m a cuddler,” he mumbled. 

  
  


Keith woke up in almost the same position as the day before. He was warm, head pillowed on Lance’s chest, their legs in a tangle. His heart stuttered, and he lifted his bleary eyes to Lance’s. He was awake, looking back at Keith with a sleepy smile. Just the same as the day before. Only that this time, the realization didn’t make Keith scramble back, panicked that he had crossed an invisible border. This time, he smiled back and pulled himself even closer to Lance. He could do that now. He might not have believed Lance liked him back under different circumstances, but they weren’t attached anymore. Lance’s eyes, pupils blown too wide for the early morning, slid down to his lips, and all thought halted. 

“Morning,” Keith mumbled. His voice came out rough from sleep, but he didn’t pause to clear his throat. He didn’t need to speak. He leaned up, and his eyes slid close again. 

“Morning,” Lance whispered into the minimal space between their lips. 

  
  


Keith’s mind was blissfully empty. Nothing felt real outside of this bed, just him and Lance and no words at all. It was a world of warmth and endless kisses and hands that always found their way back into his hair. 

Until Lance pushed back, sat up, and stared down at Keith with wide eyes and an open mouth. 

“What?” 

“They’re going to want to know how this happened.” 

“This?” 

Keith’s eyebrows were drawing ever closer together. 

“Yeah, you know!” 

Lance was frantic now, waving his hands back and forth between them. Keith didn’t know. 

“I mean that we’re not stuck together anymore. They’ll want to know how it happened and, uh. Why.” 

Lance wiped his hands on his pajama pants, and Keith just looked at him. He was nervous, but Keith didn’t understand why. In the few days they’d been stuck together, he had come to know Lance in a different way, and yet his perception of him had barely changed. He was still the same Lance, in his rumpled pajamas and unruly hair and his fingers drumming an uneasy rhythm on the cheery bright red bedspread. He couldn’t understand why Lance was nervous, but he knew that he didn’t want him to be. 

“Then we tell them,” Keith said. 

Something sour crossed Lance’s face and he got up from the bed without another look or word. Keith watched as he pulled open the dresser and scrutinized the clothes inside. 

Without Lance, the bed cooled down quickly, but Keith didn’t pull the duvet around himself again. Maybe it had been a mistake. Lance didn’t actually like him. He had just figured out how to trick the Müske, somehow. Keith shook his head to get rid of the thought. He had been attached to Lance the entire time; there was no way for him to gain knowledge of something without Keith also being aware of it. And even though Keith didn’t know enough about Naskö and their traditions to judge if there was a way to trick the Müske, he did know Lance. He trusted him. His touch and his kisses couldn’t have lied, and the dazed smile on Lance’s lips after Keith had kissed him last night was forever etched into his brain. None of that could have been fake. 

Keith shifted out of the covers and approached Lance. The floor was cold beneath his naked feet, and he drew his arms around himself. 

“We could also just tell them we kissed to get out of it. That would also be okay.” 

Lance whirled around. His eyes were still wide, and his mouth fell open when they landed on Keith. He crossed his arms tighter. Why did it still feel like he couldn’t be sure about anything? Kissing should have solved all the uncertainty between them, but it had added an issue for each one it had solved. 

Lance cleared his throat. 

“I – that’s not what I meant. I just –“

He pulled at his own hair, gaze locked on the floor, and Keith took a step closer. 

“Lance –“

“I don’t want to explain last night to anyone. I don’t want to share it with anyone else. Especially not these stuck-up officials. I just want a way to tell them without having to tell them – like, a one-word-summary –“

His eyes found Keith’s and Keith saw the idea spark behind them and transform his whole face in a split second. Lance’s gaze became focused, his lips no longer scrunched in thought, but stretched in a grin. 

“Oh. That’s it. Keith, do you wanna be my boyfriend?” 

Keith was nodding and stepping forward into Lance’s warmth before the words had registered, before he had even thought. It didn’t eliminate all his doubts, but even that didn’t matter when his heart was suddenly light again and even the cold floor biting into the soles of his feet just reminded him that this was real. It was real, and Lance wasn’t running away from him even now that he could. His arms welcomed Keith closer. Keith kissed Lance’s smile, and it didn’t matter so much anymore that they had to tell the others, or that Keith still couldn’t believe that Lance felt the same for him. They were there to remind each other. 

Just when Keith had let himself fall into the warmth of Lance’s kisses and thoughts of the cozy bed that beckoned to them, Lance drew back. Keith had to blink to get used to the sunlight. Lance was grinning broadly again. 

“So, about telling them, what do you think of –”

  
  


They appeared in the breakfast room late. The other three paladins were there, and almost finished eating already. All eyes were on Lance and Keith when they entered. Keith tried his best to smile and look normal. Lance lifted their hands to wave – they were connected at the wrist. 

“Hey, guys! Morning!” 

After everyone echoed the greeting, Shiro sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“Have you still not gotten rid of the attachment? Seriously, you two-”

Lance waved his finger back and forth in the air. 

“Just wait!” 

In front of the large table, he gripped Keith’s hand, attached again courtesy of a Müske they had found in the doorway of another room. He turned to Keith and looked him in the eyes and bent to whisper in his ear:

“I like you so much.” 

Keith shivered at the words, but allowed himself only a small smile. He could feel the eyes on them, and even though he knew they couldn’t hear the words, it couldn’t have been difficult to guess. He didn’t want anyone to be able to guess what he would say to Lance. Before he could pull back, Keith slid his hand to Lance’s neck and whispered back: 

“You don’t even know how much I like you.” 

Their hands came apart, but their fingers stayed intertwined. Keith let Lance pull back a little and their eyes met. There was a mischievous twinkle in Lance’s. 

“Really? Then why don’t you show me?” 

Keith rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help the fond smile. Lance was a little pink around the ears. Keith couldn’t look at him for much longer without blushing, too, so he turned to take in the others’ reactions. 

“Well that is one way to solve it,” Pidge said, but she was smiling through it. 

Hunk stood up and power-walked around the table to pull Lance into a side-hug and say something that had the word “proud” in it too many times. 

Shiro smiled. 

“Finally,” he mumbled into the last bite of his toast. 

  
  


The last day on Naskö was the most fun. This time, it really felt like Christmas. And there could be nothing else that felt like real, actual Christmas: Running around in ankle-deep snow, building snow men, and throwing snowballs and laughing and making snow angels, and coming back inside cold and soaked to a hot chocolate and a cozy room and someone soft and smiling to cuddle with on the couch. A friendly cat snuggled in between Keith and Lance when Keith was just about to doze off, and someone was singing a soft song with a lovely voice in the next room over. The others' voices faded into the background, the cat was purring, and Lance scratched her ear, his other arm around Keith's shoulders. 

And as he leant back into Lance’s side and felt all warm, inside and outside, Keith thought that Christmas might just become his favorite holiday. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed it, please leave kudos and maybe a comment!! You can also follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/cheeseroyalty) if you want to stay up to date with my writing.


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